


Infinite Love Without Fulfillment

by 11dishwashers



Series: Submerged In Bronze [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Character Study, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 05:34:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12292380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11dishwashers/pseuds/11dishwashers
Summary: Leo doesn't expect to get kicked off the army for his wet dreams about Prince Takumi, but it is what it is.





	Infinite Love Without Fulfillment

I awoke from my dream with a start. The first thing that happened, was I felt the walls of my lungs slipping against each other from lack of oxygen. Its absence hadn't gone unnoticed by my brain, and my heart- both pulsed me to tears. If Elise was around to ask what the matter was, I'd shrug and tell her to fetch me Niles. The matter mostly consisted of the simple fact that for the past week, Prince Takumi of Hoshido had been a regular(and unwanted) visitor of my unconscious self. 

As much as I want the ability to recount these nightly occurrences as if I was spewing to some love advice column("I've fallen in love with a prince! Help, he's so dreamy!"), the catch was that I happened to have a cock- lo and behold. It wasn't that it was big or anything, really if I was flexing something under a robe you might'nt even notice. You see, I was almost fully sure that Prince Takumi  _ also _ had one.

In any case, I had just awoken with my briefs all stuck to my crotch. You could only imagine the pinkness I went; how horrifying! Even if it was just me to witness it, I couldn't help but feel sick at the wetness. I could've had some humility, if it was piss. 

Takumi always showed up at the wrong moments. I finally dropped dead on the mattress and he showed up, to ruin it all on me. I had even told him to go ahead. 

First, I took my briefs off under the covers and wiped at my skin a bit with my hand, which came back wet, too. Secondly I stayed under the covers as I changed into a new pair- the mirror need not tell me how pathetic I looked. I should've turned it to face away from me on the first night that I'd seen Prince Takumi, yet I'd put it off for whatever reason. 

The other pair were left discarded at the bottom of my bag, I did this to spare Odin from having to touch them. The room was still hazy and brown with sun through fabric at that point, and I could hear people walking by my tent to get to the mess hall. I was in no rush, really, there was some sort of room to recover after my night. The mattress seemed more enticing than buttered toast, and so I sat and wondered what I'd see if I looked outside my tent. No doubt the army's flirts, with their hearts outspread in the palms of their hands, offering at the lowest price. That was how it was here, in our group- the lovestruck were common and insufferable. Every single one of them. No exceptions for my close friends and siblings. 

If I'm honest with you, the nature of my dream was a lot less lust-driven than the aftermath would suggest. I had trouble admitting this- I couldn't stand at the spot marked like so, and recite in my strongest voice "I, Prince Leo of Nohr, am not only depraved, but also starving in my own need for affection". I'd be in a coffin before I could say it aloud. This whole 'being in love with Takumi' thing was a problem that bore no obvious solutions, and thus, none at all. I really did just want to kiss him- it was driving me to have inner monologues, about how my objectivity for romance had vanished to some degree. 

And I did feel bad about it. Who wouldn't? Well- Hoshidian girls, quite possibly. Yet I had a cock, I'm sure I've told you as such before. 

 

My clothes were too light on me, and I needed some armour. I had effectively driven myself out of the tent and down to the barracks, anyway- without having even brushed my hair. A scrunchie held it up too close to my scalp, and I felt like each strand of hair was sewn into me, like the head of a ragdoll. The morning was self admittedly unbearable, and it showed signs of this in the way a thousand autumn leaves blew across the plains, and the tent flaps jittered, and how my legs felt magiced away and replaced with a coldness I couldn't shake a fucking match at, let alone a stick. I had blonde hair, but I wasn't a morning person. For example, once I'd awoken at ten past nine, felt fed up with the whole arrangement, and proceeded to sleep through the day and the night until it was tomorrow's afternoon. So there I stood on the green- with my thinnest clothes making a windjacket out of me, watching cynically as the people went by in small doses, with breakfast croissants and fistfuls of honeysuckle and scratched up hands. 

I could've stayed there for a long time, because if Kamui was here, she'd ghost over my wrist with her small hands and say " _ Come on, Leo, you have to eat. _ " See, no one had ever given me the kind of care that she had before, not even Camilla or Elise in my darkest moments. The thought came like a kidney stone and forcibly made me vomit onto my shoes- I thought ' _ I wish I followed her to Hoshido, I wish I could see Takumi'.  _ I actually did vomit, maybe not from the thought alone, but my jaw was snapped open and putrid liquid started spilling out of my mouth, onto the strands of grass below me and my shapeless leather shoes and my black socks. 

When I was done, the first thing that occured to my body to do, was to snivel pathetically. I didn't think anyone saw me because no one was calling out, and no clerics rushed to me. You'd assume I was drinking, what with my headache. 

I walked away from the puddle of puke and treaded through the fields, as if I was on a morning walk and not trying to wipe my shoes off in the grass. They were assuredly in a right state. I probably should dump them in a lake or something, where they could stew yesterday's dinner into the forest animals' water supply. 

The rounds of the place passed by without much thought or feeling, though obviously my throat was giving me a harder time than I gave it credit for. I ended back where I started- my tent, of course- and took my shoes off right outside the flap. Gods, the laces were so slippery they made me wince, and my fingers smelled rank afterwards from undoing them, I had tried to pull them off by the heel but they wouldn't budge without being untied first. I peeled my socks away from my skin and left them in rolled up balls on the ground, then sort of crawled inside the tent, standing on my knees so my feet wouldn't rub puke against anything. There was a bag that I had once used to store my various hair bands, and I upped the thing so all the bands flew about all over the floor. After dropping my shoes and socks in, I weighed out the pros and cons of using it to prank my retainers, somehow. It wouldn't be that hard after all- Niles had intuition, but Odin was about as gullible as a dog with a frisbee on a good day. I could seriously tell him that he'd been possessed to come into my tent last night and chant out ' _ Kumbaya, my lord _ ' while his jaw unhinged, and he'd believe me, and feel around his jaw for marks of any soreness. 

I left the bag in a dark corner of the tent, for later pranking potential, then grabbed some new socks and shoes and headed into town. 

 

I hadn't told anyone at all that I'd be there. Town was on the borders of Nohr, where no one would recognise me as a higher up. This didn't matter to me, of course. I didn't mind the looks and attention- not to say I swam and bathed in it, rather I had a huge blank space inscribed on the inside of my retinas, and if I blinked in the direction of some pretty girl gawking at me it'd flip a switch inside my eye, and the lense would filter it out until I felt I was blinded. 

Anyway, I was downtown at the tailends of the morning. There was no one around with me, which was honestly a bad move on my part, but I couldn't quite bring myself to care. The town was large enough. It had cobbled roads and multitudes of people cramping up every shop I passed- each had grand window displays, generally featuring a well dressed mannequin and a painted background, and sometimes the mannequins would have painted faces too, with better makeup than most human women. I sort of moved about the place without feeling like I was walking, my backpack held in my hands rather than looped around my shoulders. 

I reached the hot springs after some meandering around. The inside was painted yellow all over, because it was one of those ones that were geared towards the night crawlers with towels and dirty hair. I didn't have dirty hair, not really. It was a nice colour, it felt nice, looked nice, I kept it as greasy as the crown jewels at all times. Looking good wasn't a pride or a focus of mine, but if you have the potential you might as well. Us Nohrian royals can be quite scrutinised, you see. 

So I stood there between the walls of the hot springs and waited for someone to ask me if I wanted help. There was a portly woman at the front desk, who had been handing out bath tokens when I'd just walked in, but now she was arguing with some twiggy man with an overly casual demeanor. I could smell the bath salts through the sliding glass door that separated me and what I assumed was a corridor, one that lead to the changing rooms. There was this tinge of chlorine, and someone must've been standing at the pool's edge with a net extended from a great big pole, picking the panties of frisky women out from the bottom of the baths. I waited, still- fully aware that I smelled like sick and looked like I was homeless in my morning clothes and second rate pair of boots. The twiggy man finally had enough and stormed past me, out the front doors. 

I moved up to the counter, slow yet deliberate. The woman was curling her hair around a pencil when she took notice of me. Instead of saying anything at all, she raised both eyebrows expectantly. In her defense, I'd also be this impolite if I had to deal with losers like me all day. I had grown impolite from simply dealing with three losers on a daily basis- Niles, Odin, and I. 

"I'd like a bath token," I said, not really meaning to huff or anything. She pulled the pencil away from her hair, which drooped downwards in this weird curly roll, then put it on the desk. Her nails were filed and painted with lead- black. 

"You'd like one?"

"Please," I said, pushing a note across the desk. She took it and examined it for forgery- that was how messy I looked- and opened the register with a button press. 

She handed me this token, it was plastic and square and yellow, with ' _ Dragonfly Hot Springs- 1 Hour' _ scrawled across it in red marker. Ignoring the fact that Dragonfly Hot Springs was quite possibly the weirdest choice for a name ever, I couldn't help but feel like an hour would be more than enough time. I might have to rush back after all. "Here you are, then," she said, effectively dismissing me. 

I went and slid the glass open, stepping into the corridor. There was steam brewing out from beneath the door at the end, and it almost looked like a haunted room; one Odin would expect to find ghosts in, what with how the steam could be seen as smoke without context. I went into the changing room and stripped down to my skin. The radiators must've been broken in there, because it was freezing. I might have to rush back after all. "Here you are, then," she said, effectively dismissing me. 

I went and slid the glass open, stepping into the corridor. There was steam brewing out from beneath the door at the end, and it almost looked like a haunted room; one Odin would expect to find ghosts in, what with how the steam could be seen as smoke without context. I went into the changing room and stripped down to my skin. The radiators must've been broken in there, because it was freezing. It seemed like I was always too hot or too cold- outside, or in a rickety tent, or in a bath. 

I took my towel and headed out to the baths, and there were a lot of them in handy little rows, most occupied by families or tourists. I found an empty one(of course) and stood by the edge of the bowel, where the porcelain was scraped over and smooth, the water was clean but hot in a way that you  couldn't quite see the bottom of it. Leaving my towel by the edge, I stepped in and found the water went up to my mid thighs. It wasn't immediately soothing like the rumours lead you to believe- I actually had to let my flesh stew for quite some time before I was comfortable enough to lower myself. Around the edge of the bowl was raised, a seating area- when I sat down finally I felt the water boil against my bloodstream and heat it up, too. And yeah, when I let my legs float outwards and upwards I felt the hot water drift around my cock as well, which was figuratively the dirtiest part of me besides my brain, but I couldn't just lift my scalp up and give that a good old scrub down- believe me, I would if I could. 

I knew as much as any other member of my family that there were certain things you couldn't be. And honestly, if I were to say anything about it everyone would know I was misbehaving, because each one of us were painfully aware of how much had been drilled through our skulls by my father; you couldn't not know that it was wrong, after all that we'd been taught. It didn't feel like a secret in my mouth when I whispered it at night- I said it to myself, yes, but just because I could only trust myself, and even then not as much as I would've liked- it felt like a premature suicide note. Sometimes I'd be lying there after waking up too soon, and I'd hope that someone would strike me down in battle or annoyance on the battlefield, in the barracks. 

Being gay isn't a good strategy for someone who's meant to be as good as me, I probably wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, if it wasn't Prince Takumi- and even then I didn't want him to suffer the way I allowed myself to. Someone had to punish me, and no one else knew I was a scar on a good name. I had to do it to myself, inside my head. 

Was my sadness harsh enough? I considered this often, with an unfortunate lack of objective conclusions.

I soaked there for quite some time, running hands through my hair and the threading of my toes to get rid of the sick that I could feel but not see; clinging to me. Another punishment- I sat there while my body overheated until I felt I'd melt into a disgusting pink, that'd clog up the drains and shut down the bath house. Didn't want to ruin it on everyone else, after all, couldn't afford to take another hit of guiltiness. 

 

The sky was grey outside, and people who had been running knick knack stands with felted hats and finger traps were packaging all their products, when I walked by. They had big(perhaps overly so) umbrellas that almost fell apart and turned upwards, shivering and out of place with the weather. The streets were dead beneath me. 

I trudged back to our camp, where the tents were also shivering, fabric gone pale from the lack of colour that the rain brought. Marx was doing patrols about, probably because he felt like he had to, and because he trusted no one else to be as good as him at anything. I ignored him as I went back to find my mattress, where I supposed I might drop down on and die. My hair was wet- the illness was creeping downwards from my roots to my bone marrow.  

When I opened the tent flap, I found Niles there, sitting across my bedding with his coy face plastered on. I didn't expect him ever, even though he was always about the place, like an elf on the shelf who moves on his own accord. Sometimes, I considered the idea that he had garnered the ability to read minds through his time spent on the streets. Or perhaps, in the sheets- he was that kind of person, after all. You could tell sometimes by how he treated you, how he carried himself like he controlled his marionette strings with a set list of instructions. 

I, a prince, was somewhat jealous of him. No, I'm not talking about his escapades, just the fact that he could have them without facing the endless sea of self deprecation, of other sorts of deprecation, where my father would speak up as a part of me in my own fucking mind. No one expected him to be proper and mint condition, and that was a part of it. We knew he was bad anyway, of course liking men wouldn't surprise anyone. 

I took a seat next to him, uncomfortable because he wouldn't move his legs over. I was halfway off the mattress, as a matter of fact. He stayed ungodly still throughout my many movements, wherein I pulled at my hair for no reason, shifted my legs over, scratched at my arms, pushed my ass back on the duvet to try and get some space.

"It smells like puke in here," he said, after a while. I groaned and realised it and covered my nose. My puke smelled like damp towels, with a hint of gravy. 

"Why are you here then?" I asked pointedly(or at least, I hoped so). Niles was still lying down, and I felt him reach up to play with my hair, hissing a bit at how icey it was. 

"Have you eaten yet?"

"No," I said- I actually hadn't eaten all day. Not even when I was in town, and everything looked enticing and unhealthy. In some of the street vendors, they'd fry food in a pan full of oil, and they'd put a plastic bag into the pan too just to keep it crispy. I'd seen this so many times and it had yet to bother me; not really. 

He took his hand from my hair and wiped it on my back, and I felt the water soak through, making me jitter slightly. He could be so annoying sometimes. Fully aware of it, too. "Let's get lunch, then," he said, sitting up. 

I sighed and fetched my clean shoes, lacing them up again. "Do you have a hair tie?"

 

We went down to the barracks, where there was a slew of people out for their own lunch, one of these people being Elise in her black uniform and bows. She spotted me from across the mess hall and I watched in minor dismay, as she gathered together her juice box and uneaten toast crusts and half eaten slice of chocolate cake onto a plastic grey tray before coming over. Niles smiled at her, he wasn't fond in the slightest, but he could abstain his perverted mind for the time being. I could almost feel his thought process emanate into the air- wait until she was gone to start talking about the real stuff. 

She took the seat across from us, and when she spoke, she sounded like she'd been drip fed laughing gas, for no reason I could see. "Hey, Leo!" she said, tipping her head backwards to smile at us. "Niles!"

"Elise," Niles said, trying to sound warm. I couldn't blame him. It wasn't like she'd take a hint either way. I took the pitcher of milk from somewhere around the middle of the table, and poured a fair amount into my cup of tea. 

"So, how's Camilla?" Elise asked. 

"How should I know?" I replied, dipping a finger into my drink to see if it was cool enough yet. It wasn't. 

"I think she meant me," said Niles.

Well, that made sense- even though I almost had the pleasure of forgetting it. I wasn't sure why the prospect of Niles and Camilla's marriage was so off putting to think about, but it was. Even though I was possibly the only person to fully trust him in the army, I hadn't gotten it figured out just yet. Why would Camilla, really? Niles was attractive, sure, but he could be a dog when he wanted to. 

In any case, I tried to blank this thought out again. I had thought, long ago, that maybe Camilla was looking for people to fill the gap in her life that Kamui had taken. I guess we all had our own methods of dealing with it, in a way. I'd turned to ruthlessly killing whoever opposed me. Most of the time, remorse escaped me, especially in recent battles. I heard Elise crying as I passed her tent sometimes, for the people we'd killed. And yet, I had become a machine- and I mean that in the most negative light. 

"I was talking to Niles," Elise let me know.

"I got that."

Niles stifled a laugh at me, and the fact that I could tell why was astounding- I wasn't one for self reflection. "She's  _ good _ ," he meant Camilla. I could tell by the way his voice went low; it was appalling. 

If you asked whether Marx's swooping entrance was a good thing or not, I wouldn't be able to answer. But he did swoop in, on his actual horse with its muddy hooves all over the tiled floor, and exclaimed a quick "we're under attack!"

"Well, shit," said Niles. 

I kicked him under the table. "My sister's still here."

And she wasn't- she'd already taken off to grab her staff, I supposed I should've ran too, but I hadn't felt like it. Instead I scraped the chair against the floor, stood up, pushed the chair back in, took a quick sip of my(scalding hot) tea, and told Niles to fetch his silver bow. Then I left the mess hall after everyone had already rushed out. It was just me there at the door, with my cup of tea in my right hand. My fingers itched around the ceramic loop of a handle. I was in no mood, I tell you. 

But there wasn't a lot of choice in the matter. In the end, it was Odin who spotted me- he sprinted over even though he was carrying the Brynhildr, which weighed about a ton, even in my own arms. He had a knight's helmet atop his head, and it looked comically large on him. Only his nose stuck out, purple with the blood in it- the helmet was pinching the sides of his nose bridge. 

"Leo!" he cried, and it came out nasally. The Brynhildr was thrust into my freehand. I drank some more tea and dropped the mug on the ground, where it quite obviously shattered on impact, into a million pieces of overheating fine china. 

"So," I said. 

"It's the Hoshidians," he said. Oh. That had me running then- I wanted to see if Takumi was there, or what was going on. 

I ran past the deserted campsite and out towards the noise of tons of people screaming, with pain or in protest, possibly- and I had reached past the gathering of trees before I saw arrows flying about the place. 

Arrows. 

The army had already began fighting back in excess, even the weaker fighters who generally stayed behind in fear(none of us judged them for this, surprisingly). Odin wasn't even behind me, I felt like my heels might burst into spontaneous flames beneath me from the vigour I placed on them as I ran. My mount, abandoned. 

In hindsight, I shouldn't have done it. 

From behind a tree, I stood to scan the battlefield. It was a messy situation, with Hoshidian corpses already visible, most likely from Camilla's bloody hands. 

And then, at the very top of the chain, there was Princess Hinoka on her pegasus. She had drawn to the back of the Hoshidians, with a hand around her silver lance. Occasionally, it'd flash as it caught the sun between the tree branches. The thing about Princess Hinoka, was that her defining features were largely made up of what she lacked, rather than what she held. She lacked hair, she lacked beauty, she lacked a set of white teeth. And yet, no one seemed to fault her for it. Well- I did, to an extent. All things considered, her brother was so much more breathtaking than her. 

Really. When I saw him... well. I couldn't even explain it to you. I was fully aware of the extent that I didn't know him. What I had been told, was that he carried a regalian weapon, a bow named the Fujin Yumi that he used with great pleasure and pride. I knew he spoke ill of Kamui, he was the middle child, and consequently, the one who fought the hardest. I knew he was the same height as me, and that he had the longest hair I'd ever seen on a man, all dripping down from his scalp- grey, though he wasn't old, as he was the same age as me. I knew all this. But the information that had spotted out of reality, yet shown up in my brain was just as simple, and made just as much sense to me. What I'd seen in my dreams matched up with the way he moved now. He cut through even his own side with ferocity for the sake of it, pushed people about and out of the way until he was facing our troops head on. I watched all this happen without even budging a muscle. I was delusioned, really. Love had swayed even me, who had slandered it so willingly before. 

I could see, perhaps plain as day, that he thought of his soldiers as dead weight. He was so assuredly good that when he took an arrow from his quiver with a scarred hand, I let my eyes widen as if it'd allow me to see more. A tug of the bow and an arrow shot- there was a cry, I'm sure of it- I didn't look to see who had fallen. It wasn't me or Takumi. That was the only thing I could tell you with any semblance of certainty. 

He reminded me of myself. That care for his bow, the stride in his walk, how his head was tilted back slightly at all times. I knew there was no way he was happy with how he was. Perhaps, impressed at his skill, but I was never more sure of anything in my life, and less did the fight look like fighting, and more like an unpleasant writhing, an attempt out of the shadows that had been cast by his siblings. A hatred seeped so deep through your skin that it was no longer a separate part of you Like me, he was nothing- and we were nothing combined. 

I took a deep breath and blinked at him. He was so stunning, to be honest with you, no matter how small a part that was in this great big tumour of a problem. 

I almost missed Niles take the shot, though they were right next to each other. I don't know what fuelled this but I sprinted harder than I ever had in my life, and Takumi had yet to notice the arrow flying at him, and I wasn't planning on leaping in front of it or anything but the possibility was there- if he got shot, I'd be watching myself get shot, too. I was him, in that sense. 

I threw myself at him and he fell to the ground. He struggled under me, probably thinking that this was an attack. 

"Hey!" he exclaimed, pushing at my neck until I gargled. "Get the fuck off me!" 

I was rolling across the grass, having been thrown off, and yet we were both alive. Allowing myself a sigh, I stayed there on the ground as blades were swung left and right. I droned the clattering out, and my ears buzzed generously. Maybe I had died. Maybe this was it, the end of me, Prince Leo. 

My suicide had been fulfilled. The thought made me want to laugh, but I couldn't get it out of my, quite possibly, non existent mouth. My biggest regret was learning to pity myself, as it had driven me to pity Takumi, too. Piteous things were cute and lovable, to an extent- I'd managed it with a replica. And my other biggest regret was not doing anything about that bag of pukey shoes while I had the chance. Odin would've flipped a table if I'd used them, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. I don't think many people live without regrets, but I had lived without a glue to keep me sticking around, so I suppose I was happy to settle for that. 

At the end of the day, I'd always been the dustiest bronze statue in Nohr's throne room, the reason for Takumi's continued rage, and a name in only the most recent of history books. I'd made a good remembrance for myself, surely. 

 

I awoke from nothing at all with a start, whole body in crippling pain. I didn't need to open my eyes to tell I had company.

"Gods, you're awake," said the person next to me, my company- Marx, by the sound of things. "I have some bad news."

"Great," I groaned, still not over the idea that I wasn't dead. 

"We're not letting you fight anymore, after what you pulled on the battlefield- that was so foolish, Leo, Elise almost got shot trying to save you."

I felt tears well in my closed eyes. "But how will I see him then?" I asked, voice sounding chokey.


End file.
